Solnhofen Limestone

The Solnhofen Limestone, formally named the Altmuhltal Formation, is a Late Jurassic lithographic limestone of the Tithonian age, fine-grained enough that quarried slabs were once used to make printing plates. It is exposed in Bavaria, Germany, between Nuremberg and Munich, taking its name from the town of Solnhofen and extending to the nearby town of Eichstatt. The beds are a Konservat-Lagerstatte, a deposit whose placid, oxygen-depleted lagoon waters kept scavengers away and preserved organisms in exceptional detail; more than 600 species have been recovered, including twenty-nine kinds of pterosaur and soft-bodied marine animals such as sea jellies. The formation is most famous for its specimens of Archaeopteryx, an early feathered theropod whose fossils from these beds are among the most celebrated in paleontology. Extensive 19th-century quarrying for lithographic stone is what first uncovered this fossil record, and the site remains one of the most intensively studied Lagerstatten in the world. This entity documents the Solnhofen Limestone specifically as a geological formation, a Jurassic lagoonal limestone deposit.